Win in the face

For the sake of end-of-cycle summary, I believe that no one screen shot says more than this:

56. Teyona

Get ready for a lesson in milking it.

57. Teyona

Thank god milking it in this case has nothing to do with eye udders.

58. Teyona

Although, that would have been interesting, now that I think about it.

59. Teyona

But whatever, at least we got a gif out of this episode-long tantrum. Here, Teyona looks like she's cleaning herself. Funny, I would have expected some woodland-creature-esque behavior more from Allison.

Also from the same cry:

LOLeyethangs!

60. Teyona

OK WE GET IT, YOU'RE IN IT TO WIN IT LIKE MARKY MARK!!!!

61. Aminat

I love the implied narcissism in taking elimination from this show show hard. It makes me feel justified in my path of ridicule.

62. Aminat

You know, if Aminat really wanted it, she would have dug into her face, pulled her tendons manually and (to rip off Jay Manuel ripping off Tim Gunn, which he does a million times in an ANTM cycle finale especially this one) made it work.

63. Teyona

Oh yay she won boo-hoo hoo hoo hoo cares.

64. Teyona

And what a winner she is!

As with every cycle, I have a spreadsheet revealing which girl cried the most in the time she was on the show via my boy Toho. Because, let's be honest, everyone's reading this blog for the data, right?

Click to enlarge...and expand your mind. Fo No. 1? Who would have guessed? And to think that she once regarded herself as a total loser!

And now, wisdom to last a summer, or perhaps not even until the end of this post. This is all what you make it, guys.

"When you mess up, you have to cover as if you're not messing up. So this is a brand that is happy and free and bubbly. So when you mess up, it would almost be better to go, 'Whoooo!' as opposed to...

'...You just started doing the shake.'"

Yeah, I mean, I guess a happy, bubbly lunatic is preferable to a nervous one. Less chance of smelling like urine. (Though if you're the explosive "Whooo!" type, there's probably a greater chance of smelling like feces. Trade off.)

All that is to say: in it for the gif opportunity. What would the point of Tyra be without gifs, you know?

"It should be: 'Haaa. It's a stain. It's not a this. It's a this. It's a that.' That's how human beings talk."

I love that an alien is trying to tell us how human beings talk. THE CRACKS ARE SHOWING, E.Ty! I mean, really, listening to this makes me think that she doesn't listen to human beings talk anymore. I guess she's too busy listening to herself? Not that I'm one to judge anyone for listening to Tyra too much...

"Aminat, you have got to master that face. Right now, you have Novocaine in the places that it shouldn't be! The only place your face should feel like Novocaine is around the lips. But every thing else needs to be tension and strong. OK? OK."

I think my favorite recent addition to the elimination format is the parting advice portion of the show. Before you go, here's a new concept: Novocaine around the lips with no further explanation. Just do it. Figure it out and do it. Even though the shock of defeat effectively shot Novocaine around your brain, do it. You'll be famous. You'll be the next great Novacaine mouth in fashion. Try it, you'll like it. It's bubblegum-flavored. Just do it.

"I'm gonna send you in the back to get nervous, and when I call you back, I will announce who is America's Next Top Model."

Not that we needed it, but here's confirmation of her sadism. Not, "I'm gonna send you in the back because we have to talk about you in ways that even the most heartless bitch on this panel (i.e. me) couldn't bring ourselves to if you were here," or, "I'm gonna send you in the back 'cause my I.B.S., is bad today and you're too young to desecrate with my funk," or, "I'm gonna send you in the back 'cause Mommy and Daddy and Nigel and Paulina need to touch each other's privates with our mouths." The whole point of getting the girls out: another intimidation tactic. Beautiful.

And these aren't -isms, but while I'm on topic of Tyra and the evil that resides in her heart, let's examine how it manifests itself on her person:

This is good, but just a few judging-portion-of-our-show-style tweaks would make it perfect.

So easy. And I don't know anything about fashion, either. This is just common sense people.

Or how 'bout the second elimination round?

Like Allison in her CoverGirl commercial, she's almost there.

Much better. I think if you're gonna go Satan, you need to go full Satan. But maybe that's just me.

And there she goes, fanning the flames of hell.

You know, I'm not even going to do numbered points this time around. I'm going to take my usual premiere tactic and just go through everybody on this show that I have something to say about and that will be that. It's been a long cycle. I'm tired. I'm starting with the one I'm gonna miss the most.

Allison

Look at the childlike glee (and by "glee" I mean "smooshy hand") that comes when you call her name first! It's the little things, you know?

I think I'll miss her as much as the deserts miss the rain. And by "deserts," I mean, "her weave."

I think her weave has performed so well to make up for the lackluster nature of this cycle. In this shot, she looks like Alli the Kid. I bet she hooks up with some girl who works at a diner with eyes that shift back and forth rapidly per some condition or another and that she reveals to that girl's stepfather that her favorite type of movies is slasher movies within minutes of meeting him. Just a hunch, though.

God, this girl is a fountain of awesome up until the very end. Look how not excited she was to get the CoverGirl scripts:

She was like, "We gotta film a commercial? That's bullscript."

I love that she overcame that and delivered a surprisingly competent commercial. Same with her runway walk, which was way better than it should have been. She really got in there and dug in the poop...

...err, make the diarrhea, if you will.

I love that she saw Tyra for the demon that she is backstage of the fashion show.

Who wouldn't be frightened, you know?

But finally, what I love most about Allison this episode and Allison in general was the way her character arc played out:

"I've gotten over feeling lame," she told us and then made the face above, probably because she realized how lame that sounded. I was going to take that and Photoshop it on a hypothetical book (Conquering Lame, perhaps), but then I thought fuck it: you can't improve upon perfection. Love. This. Girl.

Aminat

I cannot say the same for Aminat, but I did like her a little bit more each week. If only a cycle were 5,000 episodes long, I'd finally be able to say, "Yay, Aminat." I did enjoy that when Jay asked her how she was on the set of the CoverGirl commercial, she responded, "I'm fabulous!" It made me think that instead of taking her act here, she should have slummed it over on RuPaul's Drag Race. She could have shown them that she is realer than realness.

I like how she took out her aggression on Allison as she was leaving. Not because I want to see Allison get hurt, I just like ridiculous aggression, that's all.

Also?

Her CoverGirl shot was the best. Sorry, it was. I mean, Teyona's was great as it led to Tyra's smile-with-your-eyes-gasm, but Aminat's is the only one that's around-the-way in the manner acceptable for CoverGirl. Teyona's is around-the-way in the manner that "way" means "one of Saturn's rings."

So yeah, I don't think Aminat should take this too hard. At the very least, it was all worth it to get that damn fake afro removed from her head. That's so clearly the truth that I feel comfortable saying it on her behalf.

Teyona

As for Teyona, what is there to say about Teyona besides, "What is there to say?"

Ooh, girl! For a second I confused you for Tyra! The second before that, I confused you for a tangerine with a tuft mold on the top!

"Anyone touches me, I'mma beat you!" he said to the shit-smeared models. I can't figure out which punctuates that sentence in a more menacing way: the flight-of-fancy trilling "Whoo!" that concludes it, or the Miami-tight Mr. Furley shirt he's rocking when he says it. Luckily, I have the whole summer to figure it out.

Miss J

I knew it would be stupid, but somehow, I didn't realize how stupid. Bravo, J, for raising the bar in gimmickry beyond what I thought this show was capable of. Bra. Vo.

Sutan

I hope Sutan got pregnant as a result of this. Can you imagine the awesome babies?

Slama

OK, so it was totally wrong of me but when I saw him, all I could think was, "Ew. Molester pattern baldness." That his name is but letters away from being "Salami" does not help. But then when he said in reference to our girlish, youthful Allison of all people that, "I feel also a little bit sex. A little bit more sexy. You know?" he confirmed my suspicions. I'll never second guess the impulse to stereotype again!

Thanks Slama, or should I say, Slam Her, which is what your name is trying to say, you perv!

I have nothing to say about Nigel or Paulina, since he's boring and I've already said enough about her. I'm sure you've already emailed me this saying, "I'm sure you've gotten a million emails about this..." but just to cover all bases, you should also read her TV Guide interview, which includes this bit of hilarity: "Go to Top Model only if you don’t want to be a model. These girls want to be models so desperately. And the fact is the show is not even looking for fashion models. They’re looking for personalities. It’s a Cinderella story. But [many of] the girls who succeed on the show won’t succeed [in the industry] because they’re not models. I have become friends with some of the models on the show and they actually have lost jobs when it came out that they were on America’s Next Top Model, because the fashion industry will not touch those girls with a ten foot pole."

Cute, right?

We end where we began, and where we'll undoubtedly begin and end at again and again until we're very, very old and our weakened fingers are curled and gnarled into some carpal tunnel k-hole:

Just in case you forgot what this show is really about.

And just in case you forgot after she said that, there was this:

Getting up in the camera's face right before the credits roll. It's not the best ending, but it is by far the most appropriate one.

Hey thanks for reading. I know that now is the time when many people start checking in these parts of the Internet. That's fine. I'm not here to make friends. However, if you're into ANTM, you may want to check back in at fourfour later this week. I'll have something special up that I promise will be be illuminating, among things.

If not, whatever. Have a great fucking summer. I hope you don't get eaten by a shark.

Tyra was in rare form. Within a minute she went from Cover Girl being a brand that is happy and free and bubbly to a brand that is trying to shake that bubbly image and find a new maturity.

Aminat got hosed, it seemed like they were handicapping Teyona because they thought Allison would just fall down or something on the runway while Aminat would have blown Teyona out of the water (or poop I suppose.) GO ALLISON!

Rich, you make the show for me but I also read you "Between Cycles." Love love love you!

Damn, I'm gonna miss my daily dose of Rich recaps...boo. And I do hope that the midget cycle makes up for the ho hum cycle we had this time around. I mean, there wasn't even a good house bitch/villain!
I really hope they get a good judge to replace Paulina...I am hoping against hope for Janice. Pleeease!!!

This show feels like that moment in the Laverne & Shirley title sequence where they're totally bored as the beer bottles fly by on the conveyor belt and one of them suddenly has a glove on it. But no glove yet.

I didn't realize how awesome Pauline was until I read that interview with TV Guide and saw her interview on Craig Ferguson. She's so bluntly honest it comes off as bitchy in the show (e.g. telling Celia she's old and desperate). Seriously, the only contestant in the entire run of the series who has actually looked like a model is the only one who has a real career right now (Elise). I've always thought it was weird that they all looked like pretty girls but too short and often a bit too heavy to be models. Although I think Celia could easily pull a Kristen McMenamy, who really jump started her career in her mid-twenties...

This cycle (other than Allison) sucked so hard, you made it absolutely worth watching. Thanks for all the time you put into it! Don't worry, some of us do love your other writing, too! I'll be checking in all summer long. I'll also be on maternity leave and looking for anything to break the monotony of boobs, poop, crying and sleeplessness that is about to come my way.